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Mr. Stephen Day (Cheadle): Although the hon. Gentleman's case may be welcomed by organisations such as the Howard League for Penal Reform, does he accept that the public--whether his view is right or wrong--feel safer when offenders are in prison? Rapists cannot rape and muggers cannot mug when they are off the streets. I understand many of his intellectual points, but he surely must accept that making people feel safe is a key element in providing law and order. To some extent, keeping people in prison provides that.

Mr. Hughes: The hon. Gentleman is half right. The facts, as well as people's feelings, are important. Some are interesting. In surveys, the public say that the courts do not give heavy enough sentences. If they are asked what sentences the courts give, they underestimate by about 50 per cent. They think that sentences ought to be tougher, but do not realise how tough they already are. If people are told that keeping 10 people in prison involves

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spending what it costs to employ eight police officers, they begin to realise that it may be better to reduce prison numbers so that we can have more police officers. I understand the hon. Gentleman's point, but the answers are not that simple.

The public want offenders to be punished, but in general nobody argues that we should keep the punished people--apart from those who have committed the most severe offences--in prison for the rest of their natural lives. The sooner we rehabilitate prisoners so that they can play a full part in society outside, the better. That would also be far cheaper for society, which pays for people to be locked up, where they make almost no contribution to society, pay no taxes and put nothing back in the kitty, never mind the cost to their families, who may depend on the state for as long as they are locked up.

After my visit to Lancaster prison, I went across the Pennines to Full Sutton prison outside York. Like my hon. Friends, I am making more regular prison visits. The big issue in the Prison Service is what to do when people are in prison. How can they all undertake productive activity? If we could massively increase education and training, provide apprenticeships and offer drugs rehabilitation--making sure that those measures did not stop or quickly fade away as people walked through the prison gates, but continued--we would have a chance to make an inroad. The figures are terrifying: about 75 per cent. of crimes are committed by those who have been inside--reoffenders stuck in what is known in shorthand as the revolving door.

I do not want to speak for too long and shall deal with the specifics. Part I creates the National Probation Service for England and Wales. We welcome that and the retention of the service's name, but we have a couple of questions. I put the first to the Home Secretary earlier: will he please give less power over appointments to himself and more to others? The point was rightly made from the Conservative Benches that a recent report criticised the current and the former Secretaries of State for Health for their patronage in health authority appointments. Many Labour people have been appointed. However wonderful the system may be in theory, we do not want the boys and girls known by Ministers to be appointed to chair the new probation committees. That ought to be done much more independently and I hope that there will be a move on that. The Home Secretary did not appear to be against it.

I raise a further small question. Given that the Bill deals with England and Wales, might not it be appropriate in this era of devolution to consider establishing separate services for them? Welsh colleagues may take that up elsewhere.

The probation service is happy to do its job, but it points out that its budget has been cut by about 25 per cent. in five years. If we are to ask people to be more effective in working in the community and preventing people from going to prison, they have to be given the resources--people and other things--to achieve that.

The Bill also deals with the important matter of children and family welfare, and the new structure is welcome. In a previous life, I did some work in that environment in the courts. We need a more integrated system and that is proposed, which is welcome. The Bill will move the system in England and Wales nearer to the Scottish system. The proposals to make sure that children are better protected from people who might be a risk to

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them are particularly welcome. The public are right to say that we need the most secure safeguards against the abuse and exploitation of children, whether physical or sexual. I have a couple of specific questions about that.

First, it appears that the Bill is flawed, as not only may some people be banned from working with children, but people who have been banned may never be able to have those bans lifted. In straightforward civil liberty terms, when it is clear that the risk has gone it must be right to lift a ban.

Secondly, in Committee, we need to look at the definition of "working with children". The Bill is fairly broad, but there are some practical questions. I am not saying that I have an answer, but, clearly, some people regularly employ young people: for example, to do a newspaper or milk round. There is no obvious reason why they should not be excluded from the protection provisions--the obligation provisions--any more than people in the youth club, the Church, the scout troop or anywhere else. We must have a common arrangement across the board.

Thirdly, clauses 26 and 30 contain the all-too-recurrent reverse burden of proof provision. We should put that in legislation only when we are all persuaded that there is no other way.

Fourthly, I have made the point about truanting. I simply observe that another piece of legislation that is going through the House says that, if people offend, they may lose benefits. I am not sure that social exclusion is reduced and that families at risk are helped greatly by a combination of legislation that might take parents away from a family where the children are not going to school, and might take benefits away where the adults are misbehaving. In both cases, that renders the children more vulnerable and more exposed, rather than less.

I have made clear our position on tagging; in principle, we support tagging, but the technology must exist. I gather that some of it is not yet up and running. The Home Secretary indicated that it will only be available in a couple of years. Clearly, we must ensure that tagging happens only at the end of the sentence, but I am satisfied that it is a good system.

What is a particularly good system, if we can get the technology to work, is tagging that prevents people from going somewhere, as well as tagging that watches them when they go away. Giving protection through tagging, particularly to women who have been victims of violence may be more effective than almost anything else in the system. Anyone who has been involved with those issues knows that guaranteeing security in any way is often very difficult.

The fifth big issue is drugs. I put it to the Home Secretary, and I repeat expressly: there is considerable scepticism about all the Bill's provisions on drugs and drug orders. One of the groups that put the scepticism most effectively is the Standing Conference on Drug Abuse--it happens to be based in my constituency but it is nationally recognised as competent, authoritative and well informed--which says that the Bill appears to introduce by the back door use of drugs as a criminal offence.

I hear what Ministers say, but the provision seems clearly different. In Britain, we have never before legislated for the use of drugs to be a criminal offence;

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it is possession, supply and making money out of them that is the offence. We will need to examine the matter very carefully to ensure that clause 48 does not change the law. Some of the advice that we have received says that it does. If it does, it should not. We must ensure that the Bill is made clearer.

Mr. Boateng: What advice?

Mr. Hughes: The advice came not least from the Standing Conference on Drug Abuse and others, including Liberty. It is a perfectly reasonable question and a perfectly reasonable answer. The National Association of Probation Officers has, I believe, expressed the same view. I may be wrong, but it is not a view that comes without those people having looked at the legislation.

There is scepticism about pre-sentence drug testing for adults receiving community sentences. There is the view that drug-testing adult arrestees is very expensive; it costs about £0.5 billion in a full year. It could undermine constructive arrest referral schemes and lead to the misuse of police discretion as to who not to test. It could, therefore, lead to inconsistency in the application of the law.

Mr. Boateng: Liberty again?

Mr. Hughes: Not Liberty again.

The right to bail and the ability to attach drug-related orders to that is fine in theory, but, without the treatment, all those powers are relatively worthless. In many ways, it is far better to use well-resourced, targeted, highly supervised and structured bail support packages--for example, drug-testing orders, which we already have--rather than something that does not have back-up to ensure that people are given the rehabilitation that they want.

It is right that we have mandatory drug testing in prison. It is right that people, on release, should be able to be tested before they go out and that it should be a condition of release, in some cases, that testing continues. However, unless we have the infrastructure to stop people getting back on to hard drugs, we will not deal with what is, for them, the drugs menace.

The real question--it is why I put the case; it came in the Runciman report today--is whether we spend more money on prevention and rehabilitation and less than we currently spend on drugs law enforcement, and whether we begin to reverse the figures. If about £6 out of every £10 is spent on law enforcement, and if just over £1 in £10 is spent on rehabilitation, some people believe that we should change that significantly.

The best time to test people for drugs is after conviction and before sentencing, so that they have the appropriate sentence. There should be drug testing where someone is charged with possession of drugs, where they are arrested on a drug-related offence, or where there is reasonable suspicion of that, just as we should be able to test someone who is driving allegedly under the influence of drugs, but there should not be the general power to test anyone and everyone if drugs are unrelated to the reason for arresting and holding the person. Equally, we must not forget alcohol and alcohol abuse.

We are all determined to reduce crime and reoffending. We are all, I hope, committed to the view that there should be serious and agreed solutions, rather than ideas that have

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not been thought through and worked out. I hope that we can have the flexibility to enable us to have a criminal justice system that responds to the many and different needs, but that there will be no stubbornness or refusal to examine certain solutions or proposals that are crying out for a Government response.

There is an opportunity to get the Bill right. It will need much work in Committee, but we will support it as the beginning of good legislation, provided that there is a willingness throughout this place to ensure that it is amended, potentially significantly, in the weeks ahead, before it goes on to the statute book.


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